Sandra Day O'Connor Court Quotations

The power I exert on the court depends on the power of my arguments, not on my gender.

In terms of having the American people look at the court and think of it as being fair and appropriate for our nation, it helps to have women, plural, on the court.

There was no hostility at the court when I arrived.

Most high courts in other nations do not have discretion, such as we enjoy, in selecting the cases that the high court reviews. Our court is virtually alone in the amount of discretion it has.

When I went to law school, which after all was back in the dark ages, we never looked beyond our borders for precedents. As a state court judge, it never would have occurred to me to do so, and when I got to the Supreme Court, it was very much the same. We just didn't do it.

The power I exert on the court depends on the power of the power of my arguments, not my gender